The Last Muscovite (Останній Москаль in Ukrainian) is a contemporary Ukrainian TV show.
According to the show’s official website, the show is “a patriotic Ukrainian-language comedy” (indeed, “patriotic” and “Ukrainian-language” often go hand-in-hand, as many Ukrainian shows and films are actually in Russian). It should also be pointed out that “Москаль” is actually an ethnic slur in Ukrainian that refers to all Russians.
Produced and performed by Ukrainians, this sitcom tells the story of Valera, the son of an oligarch from Moscow, who finds himself in the village of Veliki Buiki (Великі Вуйки) in the Ukrainian Carpathians. Valera’s father is hiding from both Russian mobsters and the FSB and is forced to flee Russia, so Valera must escape as well. He ends up in his father’s native village in Ukraine, where his uncle still lives and can protect him—though he doesn’t particularly want to. Valera, with his big-city Russian values, clashes with the Hutsul village inhabitants. Hutsuls are a minority ethnic group who reside in the Carpathians in Ukraine and Romania.
The show is currently in its second season, called The Last Muscovite: Judgment Day (Останній Москаль: Судний день). In this season, Valera’s father, now a Moscow businessman, joins him in Veliki Buiki. But he’s not only hiding from the authorities—he also wants to turn the village into a resort, to the inhabitants’ immense dismay.
The show has very good audience ratings on various TV rating sites. However, respite the show’s attempt at patriotism, certain nationalist commentators disapproved of the show: they felt that it presents an outdated, stereotyped image of Ukrainian village residents and thus does not do enough to assert Ukrainian cultural values in the face of “imperial threats.”
Creators: Mykola Kutsyk (Микола Куцик), Olena Vasilyeva (Олена Васильєва)
Stars: Igor Skrypko (Ігор Скрипко), Yuriy Gorbunov (Юрій Горбунов), Volodymyr Goryanskiy (Володимир Горянський), Nazar Zadniprovskiy (Назар Задніпровський), Volodymyr Nikolaenko (Володимир Ніколаєнко), Nataliya Koretska (Наталія Корецька), Galina Bezruk (Галина Безрук)
Production company: 1+1 Productions
TV channel: 1+1
The show’s official website.
The show’s first episode:
